I just happened upon your website. It it fabulous. I teach elementary music 1st - 4th in the Conroe, Texas school district. I have forwarded the information to all of our elementary teachers.
Thank you so much. Maggie Hubbard Milam Elementary Conroe, TX

"Of all the languages that human beings are speaking on the planet, it's some form of grammar," Coleman said of his album. "For me, playing music is analyzing grammar." ~ Ornette Coleman Pulitzar Prize 2007

Music touches me in a way no other medium can. That's the power of music. When done right, it's life itself. ~ Culture Keeper

Music Business Success Stories How does a musician make money? Find successful buisness models and learn how to cut through the white noise with no label, no PR firm, and no money to speak of.

Teaching History Through Roots / Routes Music / American Culture Makers And the role they played in shaping character.
Nursery Rhymes - Origins and History of Folksongs
Music Travels - History and a stolen legacy
Favorite Music Videos

National Assocication for Music Education, has seventy thousand music educators working for the education of America's children; The Music Educators National Conference, and International Society for Music Education promotes music and argues for the inclusion of music as part of the early childhood curriculum; includes benefits of early music instruction and curriculum recommendations.

Children are particularly interested in music and there have been many studies showing the connection between music and brain development. Music can be used to help children learn to read. There are thousands of free music download sites where people can download and listen to music from all over the world. Music education is a critical element in a well balanced curriculum.

What is the evolutionary function of music?

Music | Ear Training

Music is Language.
Language is Music.

Evolutionary roots of Language
The key to learning the language is the tribe's singing.
The Pirahã habitually whittle nouns down to single syllables. Phonemes (the sounds from which words are constructed) can feature nasal whines and sharp intakes of breath, and sounds made by popping or flapping the lips. Individual words were hard to learn, since Also confounding was the tonal nature of the language: the meanings of words depend on changes in pitch. (The words for “friend” and “enemy” differ only in the pitch of a single syllable.) Pirahã, like a few other Amazonian tongues, has male and female versions: the women use one fewer consonant than the men do.

NATIONAL CHILDREN'S FOLKSONG REPOSITORY The Historic Electronic Online Archive - An Online Database of Children's Folksongs. A Public Folklore Project built by the children of the United States. Integrate Literacy, Music, and Technology into the Classroom.

"STANDING IN THE SHADOWS OF MOTOWN"
Movie about the FUNK BROTHERS

To some, this movie represents the "soundtrack of my life". Grammy & Lifetime Achievement Award Winners Let your class use the computer for this create their own web quest. "Responsible Musicians, Artists, Athletes and Behind the Scenes People Who Support Education" have a message for children in your classroom FUNK BROTHERS WEB QUEST

ALL INFORMATION
IS SOFTWARE

Some software ARE programs

and some ARE music

and some ARE literature.

It makes no difference. ~ Bear

"I use the analogy of music. Writing a computer program is analagous to writing a musical composition and putting it into musical notation.
Preparing a computer program for distribution to end users (such as home users or businesses) is analogous to having a person read the music and play it on a piano that cuts piano rolls. The piano rolls are analogous to packaged software. You can duplicate them, too, so you have multiple rolls produced from one transcription session by the person cutting the rolls. Running a program on a computer is analogous to putting the piano roll into a player piano. There are even portability issues. Piano rolls come in different sizes. Not every roll can be played on every player piano. As for ones and zeroes, a hole in the piano roll that lets air through and causes a note to be played is like a one. A blank spot on the roll with no hole is like a zero."~ Marilyn Sander*

Music | Online Lesson Plan | Music Makes You Smarter

Music is a natural intuitive phenomenon operating in the three worlds of time, pitch, energy, and under the three distinct and interrelated organization structures of rhythm, harmony, and melody.
While music is a natural intuitive phenomenon, composing, improvising and performing it are art forms. Also, listening to it can be a source of entertainment, while learning and understanding it are disciplines.

"Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts as the one which, more than any other, ministers to human welfare." ~ Herbert Spencer, British philosopher and sociologist

Music education in North America can be traced to the colonies of the seventeenth century. In the South, there existed no organized music education system. However, rote learning played a major role in the transmission of music traditions. In the Northern colonies, music was already an important consideration in the lives of the Pilgrims. The Bay Psalm Book, especially later editions, provided methods for solmization along with performance instruction. Thus Northern colonists could succeed in teaching themselves rudimentary music skills, as related to psalm singing.Music | Free Music Downloads

Traditionally, one of the major difficulties in defining music has been to use the word to try to describe all activities and things related to music and/or sound. For example, scores only become music through performance(s), or when (recorded) performances are replayed. Now it's about pull not push. Back in 2000, only college students, those on internet 2 and early adopters had high speed connections. Now seemingly everybody does. So, desirous of watching video, Now everybody is watching, and participating.

Nearly a century ago, a new technology emerged that changed the music publishing industry forever by leaving a lasting impact on the law. That new technology was the piano roll essentially long perforated sheets that operated a player pianos keys. To make sure that musical compositions were widely available for reproduction as piano rolls and in other forms, Congress in 1909 enacted the Section 115 mechanical
compulsory license. This statutory mechanism allows anyone who wants to make use of a musical work to obtain a license to reproduce and distribute phonorecords of the work, in exchange for paying a royalty set by statute, as long as the terms and conditions of Section 115 are followed. In the original 1909 Act, Congress set the statutory rate for reproducing and distributing musical works at 2 cents per song. Remarkably, this rate did not change for almost 70 years, until 1976.

The word music comes from the Greek mousikê (tekhnê) (μουσικη (τεχνη)) by way of the Latin musica. The word music is ultimately derived from mousa, the Greek word for muse. In ancient Greece, the word mousike was used to mean any of the arts or sciences governed by the Muses.
Later, in Rome, ars musica embraced poetry as well as what we now think of as music. Our current understanding of music as being something which is abstract and has nothing to do with language (but something which may be combined with it in song) is relatively modern.
In the European Middle Ages, musica was part of the mathematical quadrivium - arithmetics, geometry, astronomy and musica. The concept of musica was split into three major kinds: musica universalis, musica mundana, musica instrumentalis. Of those, only the last - musica instrumentalis - referred to music as performed sound.

Music and Science The Whole Brain is a Rhythmic Organ

From a Tiny Hum
Came the Big Bang

The leading theory of how the universe could have exploded out of the primordial nothingness, known as the theory of inflation, predicts that the quantum fluctuations should have rattled the universe in such a way that it resonated like a vast organ pipe, with one main tone, or wavelength, and a series of overtones or harmonics. Two detectors in Antarctica have discovered minute patterns in a glow from primordial gases, possible traces of the cosmic match that ignited the Big Bang and led to the creation of the universe 14 billion years ago. The process was likely to have taken place in a fraction of a second comparable to a decimal point followed by 32 zeros and a 1. The new observations have found traces of colossal waves, much like sound waves, that the fluctuations probably set in motion, roiling the young universe. http://nytimes.com/2001/04/30/science/30COSM.html?
ex=989669481&ei=1&en=32d612db51cede1

“In 1889, Nietzsche wrote, “Without music life would be a mistake.”

Music | Music and Brain Connections

President Clinton, remembering his own music teachers, said, "I don't think I would have become president if it hadn't been for school music."Presidents Song
At school, the president said: "I learned that music was more than scales and keys or how to make sure I was always in tune. Music taught me how to mix practice and patience with creativity. Music taught me how to be both an individual performer and a good member of the team." And the lesson for everyone, he said, is that "we are stronger when we are playing in harmony based on our common humanity." First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton said the goal, is to "to put music back in our schools and back in our children's education."Playing music, she said, changes lives, by sparking the creativity of young people, teaching discipline and persistence, and serving as an anchor keeping kids in school and out of gangs and destructive activity.

What does music have to do with improving education?

Going back to Plato and Aristotle, music has been considered one the "Four Pillars of Learning."

Plato said: "The decisive importance of education in poetry and music: rhythm and harmony sink deep into the recesses of the soul and take the strongest hold there. And when reason comes, he (the student) will greet her as a friend with whom his education has made him long familiar."

Aristotle said: "We become a certain quality in our characters on account of music."

Allan Bloom said: "Music is at the center of education, both for giving passions their due and for preparing the soul for the unhampered use of reason."

It was 1906. "Get Music on Tap Like Gas or Water" promised the headlines, and soon the public was enchanted with inventor Thaddeus Cahill's (1867-1934) electrical music by wire.
The Telharmonium was a 200-ton behemoth that created numerous musical timbres and could flood many rooms with sound.
Beginning with the first instrument, constructed in the 1890's, and continuing with the installation of the second instrument at Telharmonic Hall in New York, the rise and fall of commercial service, the attempted comeback of the third Telharmonium, and ending with efforts to find a home for the only surviving instrument in 1951, this documentary provides a definitive account of the first comprehensive music synthesizer. (2) (3)

The irony is that a 4 year education at Berklee School of Music now costs 200K all in. Tuition alone is up 1700 % since 1975. That's hard to justify by the average young musician and his family.
Music used to mean something...used to be worth something to people. Now it's there for the taking and our free music marketplace has rendered it worthless to society... background noise. America is killing off yet another one if its greatest natural resources...its artists. And nobody but the artistic community seems to give a damn.